Twilight Sleep
He walked to the door, and then turned back and stood irresolute. To study the picture he had lifted the border of the lampshade, and the light struck crudely on the statue above Lita's divan; the statue of which Pauline (to her children's amusement) always said a little apprehensively that she supposed it must be Cubist. Manford had hardly noticed the figure before, except to wonder why the young people admired ugliness: half lost in the shadows of the niche, it seemed a mere bundle of lumpy limbs. Now, in the glare—"Ah, you carrion, you!" He clenched his fist at it. "That's what they want that's their brutish idol!" The words came stammering from him in a blur of rage. It was on Jim's account . . . the shock, the degradation. . . The paper slipped to the floor, and he dropped into his seat again.
Slowly his mind worked its way back through the disgust and confusion. Pauline had been right: what could one expect from a girl brought up in that Landish house? Very likely no one had ever thought of asking where she was, where she had been—Mrs. Landish, absorbed in her own silly affairs, would be the last person to know.
Well, what of that? The modern girl was always free, was expected to know how to use her freedom. Nona's independence had been as scrupulously respected as Jim's; she had had her full share of the perpetual modern agitations. Yet Nona was firm as a rock: a man's heart could build on her. If a
